Field bus systems such as the interbus or the process field bus, for example, have been used for quite some time in industrial automation technology. A programmable control unit and multiple bus subscribers, for example, may be connected to one another via a field bus. Process data are cyclically or acyclically exchanged between the control unit and the bus subscribers as a function of the importance. Process data may represent I/O data, diagnostic data, and the like. A bus subscriber may be an interface module to which multiple sensors and actuators may be connected.
Such field bus systems are becoming increasingly more complex and powerful, as evidenced, among other things, by the increasingly smaller housing dimensions of the bus subscribers, with a simultaneous increase in the connection options for sensors and actuators.